


tempus fugit

by anticute



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, god it's been years since i've written pepper? what is writing? can you eat it?, i will not have children but by god morgan is my daughter, i'm very invested in morgan's future and her happiness., pepper is best mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24833590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticute/pseuds/anticute
Summary: For Morgan - her father is simultaneously an amalgamation and reduction, out of and from people’s stories; photos; the news; and a singular recording of love valued at some silly, arbitrary number of 3000.
Relationships: Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Kudos: 5





	tempus fugit

**Author's Note:**

> THE FIC THAT REFUSED TO BE NAMED FOR THE LONGEST TIME. titling is hard. in typical anticute fashion - my titles before they are actually named are usually easier/funner. this one was papa can you hear me . mp4 for QUITE some time.
> 
> i'm gonna go ahead and applaud myself for writing actual post-phase 1 mcu fic. lord only knows why my brain refuses to write outside of that timeframe.

Morgan sees a father on Instagram, Twitter memes, and home videos.

A father, with an arm warmly around the shoulders of her mother - her freckles, vibrant or faded depending on the lighting in said videos, or are drowned out by the flood of the flashflash from the paparazzi. In another set of videos, a father grinning alongside her uncle, and in some said videos, Uncle Rhodey still has his leg.

She can hold news clippings and magazine articles of a father. She can press her fingers into the corners of photos with a father, and again - there is her mother, her uncles, her aunts, and all the many people that make up her family, blood or not.

(Blood is thicker than water. But people forget - that the saying actually goes: blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.)

These are people that she knows and can hold.

She does not know her father, and she cannot hold him.

(Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.)

* * *

For Morgan, her father is simultaneously an amalgamation and a reduction - out of and from people’s stories; photos; videos; gifs; and a singular recording of love valued at some silly, arbitrary number of 3000.

* * *

Morgan is more than her father’s daughter - she is also her mother’s daughter. She has more than just the Stark legacy in her veins, and she will pointedly remind others the same.

She will insist on writing out Potts in her name as she grows up. She will learn the alphabet very early on, and will sing very loudly the letters s, t, a, r, k, just as she learns the letters p, and o. These are _special_ letters, she will insist when she has to learn cursive, and specifically learns how to write these letters in a deliberately pretty way. She tries to mimic her mother's penmanship, as she studies her mother's signature.

She will insist that her teachers call out her full last names for roll call every first day of school, as she goes through preschool, high school, and will print her entire name to the very last pages of her final thesis paper for grad school.

(Eventually, Morgan will be more than just a Stark or Potts daughter. She will be herself. One day, she will hold herself and her name as Morgan Stark-Potts, on her own and measured by her individual failings and accomplishments.)

She is not ruined by never knowing her father. But she is….something. Through therapy, she finds herself calling it ‘Not-Ruined.’ She is either Not-Ruined by never knowing her father, and will be disconnected from that; or Not-Ruined because she will never know her father, and cares so, so much.

(Later, and later on, she will reconcile - it is both.)

* * *

Pepper has this memory:

She and Morgan, at the beach, on a Thursday afternoon. She will never let work take over her life. The work/life balance, as it were.

Rhodey was supposed to join, but he had training with some new units that he was roped into at the very last minute. Morgan was, of course, not happy, and Rhodey made some promises that he was perhaps a little too eager to agree to. The only Stark he’d never refuse.

It’s early April, a newly minted season of spring, and Pepper is wiping down Morgan’s fingers from her sandwich massacre, and listen Morgan, it’s important to get under the fingernails, it’s important to clean up after your messes. Morgan’s just nodding along, chewing away the remnants of her food in that slow way children do, and Pepper knows that all her words are just one ear, out the other.

Morgan's also humming, a little thing she does when she’s content, happy, and full of food. Pepper holds onto these moments, because she knows that eventually Morgan will outgrow that habit.

Pepper balls up the wipe, disposes of it by tucking it into the sidepocket of her bag. She locates and tugs at the top of the sunscreen bottle, wedged between the other some thousand items. It’s been a rough week, and Pepper is uncharacteristically unorganized. This outing was rather impromptu, but Happy was eager when tasked to drive them.

Pepper hooks her thumb under the sunscreen top to open it, and reaches out for Morgan’s hand to start reapplying because Morgan’s unfortunately inherited her fair skin and propensity to burn. She brushes some sand off the top of Morgan’s knuckles, turns over her hand, and then squeezes out some on her little fingerpads, one by one. Morgan’s humming quiets down and Pepper looks at Morgan, ready to instruct her to apply especially on her nose because that's a hot spot.

She finds, though, Morgan’s little brown eyes - intently gazing across the sand, behind them. She follows, and further finds:

A family, enjoying their own lunch, tucked under a similar looking yellow-orange beach umbrella.

It is a view of a quintessential American family - the nuclear unit that has been ingrained as the happy family. Parents. Two fathers, in this case. One boy. One girl.

(Pepper is already dealing with that notion in her family. They keep insisting that she move on:

“…because a child should have more and you just work so much. Oh, wait. Your father wants to say something. Hold on. ..... Honey, you’re not- ...You’re covering the camera with your finger- Move- There you go. Can you see us okay?'

"Hi Dad."

“Hi sweetheart. I was just thinking - what’s going on with you and that James fellow-“

“Alright, _no,_ stop, we’ve been through this. Should I just set up a recording of me at this point?”

“Well, why not? He seems to be a pretty significant man in your life.”

“And, _and_ , you’ve been friends for so long. How about the next time we visit, we take Morgan for a while, and you and James can….-”

Pepper is so tired of the nuclear unit and this idea - she’s going to GO nuclear on her parents.)

Of course, it is the fathers that strike Pepper and she thinks that is what has Morgan’s attention. It’s natural. Pepper knows that she is going to carry this burden with Morgan, for their lives. She’s prepared to. It just doesn’t make it any easier.

It isn’t easier at this moment, because there is a little girl sitting atop one of the father’s shoulders, and their smiles - they are absolutely blistering, when the ice cream the little girl is holding drips onto his arm, and he’s laughing, and the other father is teasing, telling Nora to eateateat it fast before it all melts away or Papa’s going to have it all!

It is not this snapshot of a picture-perfect image of family that hits Pepper.

It is the _nostalgia_ and _want_ of memories Past, and memories to Never Pass, and these grip and are vibrant in the grief that will never go away. She knows it won’t. It will just ebb and flow, when it’s been two years since, and will be two years more, and two more years after that, and so on.

But if it is want that she feels - then Morgan must feel it too. And more, Morgan can’t possibly fathom the concept of nostalgia yet, so she must be feeling more than what she can process and Pepper. Is. Prepared.

“What are you looking at, sweetheart?” Pepper prompts, gently tucking a brown lock behind Morgan’s ear. She taps her chin affectionately, then nudges Morgan towards her, as she undoes the tie of Morgan’s now lop-sided ponytail, to redo her hair. Morgan’s gaze is unwavering even as she complies, mindlessly climbs over her mother’s legs to sit criss-cross in front of her.

Pepper tucks in the loose tag of her bathing suit, noting it might be time to buy her a new one as Morgan is outgrowing this one.

“That girl,” Morgan says simply.

“Yes, Pepper says, steels herself for a tantrum or confusion or whatever emotions will out and manifest from her. She untangles the strands of Morgan's hair, brushing through slowly with her fingers. Pepper grimaces, notes she needs to cut her own nails soon. She could have sworn she _just_ clipped them.

“Can we get ice cream.”

Pepper’s hands still atop Morgan’s head, her hair sticking out limply in its dried and semi-wet state, mixed with sweat and seasalt, and it's somewhat chalky from the sunscreen applied on the top of her scalp. Sometimes, under the sun, her hair will look almost auburn, and Pepper wonders if it’ll turn more red-brown as Morgan grows up.

(Tony had asked about this, one night when neither of them were able to sleep. Morgan was almost seven months old, teething.

He asked how Pepper was as a baby; her family line, their hair color, meandered about her cousins at the baby shower, and then about genetics. He needed to know, for scientific purposes, Pepper, if Morgan would be red-headed eventually, or do you think it'll stay that brown.)

Pepper takes a steady breath, then smiles down softly just as Morgan’s little face turns up, expectantly, pleadingly, at her, for _ice cream_.

She brushes a thumb over the small birthmark on Morgan’s forehead, and says,

“Yeah. We can get ice cream.”

**Author's Note:**

> honestly - i have no idea how i want this scene to read.
> 
> is the ice cream ~symbolic~ and morgan’s little kid brain is unconsciously connecting ice cream to tony, and is really saying ‘i want dad?’
> 
> or is she genuinely not even caring, and just really wants ice cream. because i mean. let’s be real. who wouldn’t. whether you’re whatever age morgan is in this fic (5/6?), or you’re 29, you’re gonna want ice cream when someone else has it.
> 
> anyway i’m very invested in morgan and her future and her huge family that supports and loves her and she both doesn’t feel tony’s absence, but also does. morgan grows up HAPPY okay, but yeah - she has her own heavystuff that absolutely does NOT define her, and is just a part of her.
> 
> pepper is best mom.
> 
> (also: no, i'm not suggesting something is going on with rhodey and pepper. but i imagine there's Talk. that, and, well - as always, awkwardly written rhodey is better than no rhodey at all.)


End file.
